


Jack-o-Lantern Troubles

by comebacknow



Series: 31 Days of Drarroween [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Herbology, Hogwarts Fifth Year, Pumpkin carving, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, malfoy: little shit, some background deamus as a treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26778385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comebacknow/pseuds/comebacknow
Summary: It's October of 5th year and the students have been told to carve the pumpkins for the Great Hall's decorations. Shenanigans ensue.
Series: 31 Days of Drarroween [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951957
Kudos: 6





	Jack-o-Lantern Troubles

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2 of 31 Days of Drarroween! Enjoy :>

* * *

Harry is staring at a bright orange pumpkin and trying to figure out how he’s even supposed to get started. 

This year, Professor Umbridge has declared that instead of Professor Flitwick charming the pumpkins to carve themselves for the Great Hall, it would behoove the students to learn manual labor for themselves. “Builds character,” she’d said. 

So now, the fifth year students are shoved into Greenhouse Four during their Herbology lesson, each of them staring at a pumpkin with muggle carving tools laid out on the side. It’s not anything truly new to Harry - he’s seen Aunt Petunia carve a few pumpkins and even watched Dudley stab a pumpkin or seven to death. But he’s never had the chance to do it himself.

Now that he’s finally standing in front of one, he doesn’t even know where to begin.

Hermione, of course, has started by drawing out her art on the pumpkin. “It’s simple, really,” she’d said. “Draw the image first, perfect it, and then just carve along the lines with the tools. That’s how my parents used to do it when I was younger!”

It seems easy in theory, but the problem is that Harry doesn’t even know how to draw. Professor Sprout has put a few example pumpkins in the center, but they all seem far too complicated for Harry to even begin copying.

He looks to his other side where Ron has skipped tracing entirely and is now wedging a planter’s spade into his pumpkin with two hands. On the other side of him, Seamus doesn’t seem to be faring much better.

“Alright, class, good job so far! Good job!” Professor Sprout calls out. She’s been walking around the greenhouse peering over students’ shoulders to see their work and giving advice here and there. (Harry was particularly pleased when he saw her frown at Malfoy’s pumpkin without a single comment. Malfoy, who didn’t even seem to notice her behind him, had looked up to see Harry watching him and gave him a twisted sort of smile. He could only imagine the disgusting, evil looking thing he was carving. He wouldn’t put it past him to carve Voldemort’s face into a pumpkin just to scare the rest of the school to death.)

“Harry, you’d better get started,” Hermione whispers quickly to him, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Professor Sprout is almost at our side of the table and you haven’t even made a dent.”

Harry flicks his gaze down at Hermione’s pumpkin to see her drawing finished. It’s got two triangles for eyes and a wide, toothy smile. Harry looks back at his pumpkin and then over to Ron’s, which now has an uneven square where one of its eyes should theoretically be. 

Harry barely picks up one of the carving knives when a sudden crack sounds across the greenhouse. His shoulders flinch up and he turns to the left to see Seamus staring dumbfounded at his pumpkin, which is now split in half on the table.

Professor Sprout sighs somewhere at the front of the room and bustles her way down the line. “Quickly, Finnigan, here’s another. You’d better hope you can get something done before the end of class or else I won’t be able to pass you for the day.”

Seamus’ ears turn bright red as Sprout sweeps the pumpkin chunks into the wastebasket and gives him a new one.

Dean, next to him, tosses his razor down and grabs a carving knife to help Seamus start gutting the insides of it out.

“Mr. Potter,” Sprout says as she nears him. “You’d do well to focus on your own work.” She eyes him pointedly.

Harry looks back at his pumpkin. It’s been hollowed out, but other than that it’s simply untouched. He presses the carving knife into where he supposes an eye should go and pushes. It’s harder than he’d have imagined, but finally it gives and the knife goes through. 

“What do you think Potter’s carving, boys? A father of his own?” Malfoy drawls from across the table.

Harry clenches his jaw.

“Just ignore him,” Hermione whispers.

“Or accidentally fling your knife across the table,” Ron adds. “No one would know.”

“ _ Ronald. _ ” Hermione hisses.

Ron flinches back and returns to his pumpkin, which is looking more and more like a lopsided toad.

“Mr. Malfoy,” Professor Sprout warns as he starts to say something again. “Focus on your own pumpkin please? Nevermind what others are doing.”

Malfoy growls under his breath and returns to his pumpkin.

Harry can’t help but glance up and watch as Malfoy’s features shift from annoyance to a strange sort of concentration. His brows are furrowed and he’s just inches from the pumpkin, hunched over the table. The fingers of one hand are spindly and delicately holding the pumpkin in place while the other works with a thin, pencil-sized razor to carve something into it. 

Malfoy’s eyes suddenly flick up to meet Harry’s and then his demeanor shifts into something more annoyed than concentrated. “ _ What? _ ” he mouths sharply.

Harry rolls his eyes and looks back at his own pumpkin. He saws his carving knife in a triangle shape and pops out some of the pumpkin finally and then steps back to look at it. Admittedly, it’s not completely straight, but it’s vaguely triangle-shaped. He repeats the same process on the other side, and when he steps back his pumpkin has two eyes (even if one is about half an inch above the other).

“Oh  _ no, _ ” Hermione whispers after another five minutes.

Harry looks over at her pumpkin. It’s got two eyes, its mouth is carved now, and there’s a single tooth jutting from it. “What?”

“I accidentally carved out the other tooth I was supposed to leave in!”

Harry blinks at it. “Hermione, it looks fine.”

“No!” she says, close to bursting into tears. “It’s supposed to have one on the top here, see? And then another on the bottom on  _ this  _ side!” 

Harry slides his gaze to his other side to see Ron with a quirked brow. 

Ron quietly shakes his head and returns to his own troll-pumpkin. Past him, Seamus’ pumpkin seems to be doing a bit better now, and Dean’s pumpkin looks like it could’ve been sold in a store. Just past them, Neville is on his  _ third  _ pumpkin, to everyone’s surprise.

“Gran and I used to carve pumpkins all throughout October!” he says cheerfully as he chucks the last of the pumpkin guts into the bucket beneath the table. “We’d make scary ones, happy ones, funny ones--”

“Ugly ones,” Malfoy adds. “Oh, sorry. That’s just  _ you _ , not your pumpkin. My mistake.”

Neville snaps his mouth shut and looks back down at his pumpkin, all tales of pumpkin carving silenced.

“Don’t worry about him, Neville,” Harry calls out to him, loud enough to Malfoy to hear. “He’s just mad because his pumpkin won’t look nearly as good as any of yours.”

Malfoy narrows his eyes at Harry and looks back down to his pumpkin, trading the small razor for one with a curved point. 

  
  


When the period is finally over, Harry is pleased to show his finished pumpkin to Professor Sprout. It’s got two lopsided triangle eyes and a wide smile without any teeth. She smiles down at him, pats him on the shoulder, and marks something on her clipboard that looks suspiciously like a checkmark. Harry takes it as a win as he slings his bag over his shoulder and tucks the pumpkin under his arm while waiting for the others. 

Hermione finally jogs over to him breathlessly. “Well, it’s not my best work, but for my first time it’ll do. I think my parents will be proud. I’ll need to send them a photograph of it after it’s charmed to float.”

“It’s brilliant, Hermione,” Harry says as Ron joins them.

They’re slowly making their way back up to the castle when Harry hears his name called out behind him.

“Hey, Potter!” Malfoy calls again.

Harry sighs and goes to turn but Hermione grabs his shoulder.

“Just ignore him,” she says. “He’s only going to say something rude.”

Harry nods and thinks instead of their upcoming Charms class, where they’ll be learning to enchant their pumpkins to float in the Great Hall for the month of October. His thoughts are broken when a shoulder bumps into his, almost making him drop his pumpkin entirely.

“Come on, Malfoy,” Ron groans, catching his own pumpkin before it falls to the ground.

“Sorry, Weasel,” Malfoy sneers. “Didn’t see you there. Thought you were just another pumpkin with that atrocious hair. Anyway, Potter, since you’re being rude and ignoring me,” Malfoy pauses and spins his pumpkin around in his hands to face Harry.

For a moment, Harry considers ignoring it and shouldering past Malfoy and hopefully making him drop  _ his  _ pumpkin, but then Harry looks down at it. 

“Whoa,” Dean says as he’s walking past. 

Despite it being Malfoy, the pumpkin is actually carved really well. It’s mouth is in the shape of a frown with a tongue sticking out, and it’s got eyes that actually have irises carved into them as well (cross-eyed). Around its eyes is a thin carving in the shapes of round glasses and in the center above those is a very thin lightning-shaped scar. 

“See the resemblance?” Malfoy laughs. “It’s like looking into a mirror isn’t it?” 

Pansy cackles next to him and Blaise is just behind her, their thin mouth smirking up in amusement.

Ron grabs Harry’s shoulder and pulls him past Malfoy back up toward the castle, leaving the laughing Slytherins behind. “He’s a prat. Just ignore him.”

“For what it’s worth, Harry,” Neville says, jogging up to them and pulling a wagon of pumpkins behind him, “I don’t think it looks like you at all.”

“Thanks, Neville,” Harry says flatly.

Neville beams and takes off toward the castle.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” Hermione asks with a tilt of her head.

“Here we go,” Ron groans. “What’s strange, ‘mione? That Malfoy found yet another way to make fun of Harry? Or that he even bothered to do the lesson at all?”

There’s a beat of silence that makes Harry turn to look at Hermione.

She’s looking at the ground with her head tilted and then she turns back over her shoulder toward Malfoy. Her mouth twists to the side.

“Well?” Ron asks. “Spit it out, then.”

“I don’t know,” Hermione shrugs and looks forward again. “I just find it strange that when given the chance to carve anything into a pumpkin, Malfoy would spend an entire period focusing on Harry and making sure to get his features right. He even got the strange dimple you get next to your mouth when you frown, did you notice?”

Harry frowns in confusion.

“Oh wow!” Ron says. “She’s right!”

Harry flinches back from Ron’s finger and then presses his own to his face, trying to find what they’re talking about.

“Just strange, is all,” Hermione shrugs. She’s got an odd sort of smile on her face this time, and Harry’s not quite sure he likes what it means.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter @manichalseyy <3


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